for a swim in our underwear in that magnificent surf and it was there, on the beach, with a big joint smoking in his hand where Enrique turned and pointed inland at the beautiful green fields of Mexico and said “See the three girls in the middle of the field far away?” and I looked and looked and only barely saw three dots in the middle of a distant pasture. “Three muchachas,” said Enrique. “Is mean: Mehico!”
He wanted me to go to Vera Cruz with him. “I am a shoemaker by trade. You stay home with the gurls while I work, mir? You write you interessa books and we get lots of gurls.”
I never saw him after Mexico City because I had no money absolutely and I had to stay on William Seward Burroughs’ couch. And Burroughs didnt want Enrique around: “You shouldnt hang around with these Mexicans, they’re all a bunch of con men.”
I still have the rabbit’s foot Enrique gave me when he left.
A FEW WEEKS LATER I go to see my first bullfight, which I must confess is a novillera, a novice fight, and not the real thing they show in the winter which is supposed to be so artistic. Inside it is a perfect round bowl with a neat circle of brown dirt being harrowed and raked by expert loving rakers like the man who rakes second base in Yankee Stadium only this is Bite-the-Dust Stadium.— When I sat down the bull had just come in and the orchestra was sitting down again.— Fine embroidered clothes tightly fitted to boys behind a fence.— Solemn they were, as a big beautiful shiny black bull rushed out gallumphing from a corner I hadnt looked, where he’d been apparently mooing for help, black nostrils and big white eyes and outspread horns, all chest no belly, stove polish thin legs seeking to drive the earth down with all that locomotive weight above—some people sniggered—bull galloped and flashed, you saw the riddled-up muscle holes in his perfect prize skin.— Matador stepped out and invited and the bull charged and slammed in, matador sneered his cape, let pass the horns by his loins a foot or two, got the bull revolved around by cape, and walked away like a Grandee—and stood his back to the dumb perfect bull who didnt charge like in “Blood & Sand” and lift Senor Grandee into the upper deck. Then business got underway. Out comes the old pirate horse with patch on eye, picador KNIGHT aboard with a lance, to come and dart a few slivers of steel in the bull’s shoulderblade who responds by trying to lift the horse but the horse is mailed (thank God)—a historical and crazy scene except suddenly you realize the picador has started the bull on his interminable bleeding. The blinding of the poor bull in mindless vertigo is continued by the brave bowlegged little dart man carrying two darts with ribbon, here he comes head-on at the bull, the bull head-on for him, wham, no head-on crash for the dart man has stung with dart and darted away before you can say boo (& I did say boo), because a bull is hard to dodge? Good enough, but the darts now have the bull streaming with blood like Marlowe’s Christ in the heavens.— An old matador comes out and tests the bull with a few capes’ turn then another set of darts, a battle flag now shining down the living breathing suffering bull’s side and everybody glad.—And now the bull’s charge is just a stagger and so now the serious hero matador comes out for the kill as the orchestra goes one boom-lick on bass drum, it get quiet like a cloud passing over the sun, you hear a drunkard’s bottle smash a mile away in the cruel Spanish green aromatic countryside—children pause over tortas—the bull stands in the sun head-bowed, panting for life, his sides actually flapping against his ribs, his shoulders barbed like San Sebastian.— The careful footed matador youth, brave enough in his own right, approaches and curses and the bull rolls around and comes stoggling on wobbly feet at the red cape, dives in with blood streaming everywhichaway and the boy just accommodates him through the imaginary hoop and circles and hangs on tiptoe, knockkneed. And Lord, I didnt want to see his smooth tight belly ranted by no horn.— He rippled his cape again at the bull who just stood there thinking “O why cant I go home?” and the matador moved closer and now the animal bunched tired legs to run but one leg slipped throwing up a cloud of dust.— But he dove in and flounced off to rest.— The matador draped his sword and called the humble bull with glazed eyes.— The bull pricked his ears and didnt move.— The matador’s whole body stiffened like a board that shakes under the trample of many feet—a muscle showed in his stocking.— Bull plunged a feeble three feet and turned in dust and the matador arched his back in front of him like a man leaning over a hot stove to reach for something on the other side and flipped his sword a yard deep into the bull’s shoulderblade separation.— Matador walked one way, bull the other with sword to hilt and staggered, started to run, looked up with human surprise at the sky & sun, and then gargled—O go see it folks!—He threw up ten gallons of blood into the air and it splashed all over—he fell on his knees choking on his own blood and spewed and twisted his neck around and suddenly got floppy doll and his head blammed flat.— He still wasnt dead, an extra idiot rushed out and knifed him with a wren-like dagger in the neck nerve and still the bull dug the sides of his poor mouth in the sand and chewed old blood.— His eyes! O his eyes!—Idiots sniggered because the dagger did this, as though it would not.— A team of hysterical horses were rushed out to chain and drag the bull away, they galloped off but the chain broke and the bull slid in dust like a dead fly kicked unconsciously by a foot.— Off, off with him!—He’s gone, white eyes staring the last thing you see.— Next bull!—First the old boys shovel blood in a wheel-barrow and rush off with it. The quiet raker returns with his rake—“Ole!,” girls throwing flowers at the animal-murder in the fine britches.— And I saw how everybody dies and nobody’s going to care, I felt how awful it is to live just so you can die like a bull trapped in a screaming human ring.—
Jai Alai, Mexico, Jai Alai!
THE LAST DAY I’M IN MEXICO I’m in the little church near Redondas in Mexico City, 4 o’clock in the gray afternoon, I’ve walked all over town delivering packages at the Post Offices and I’ve munched on fudge candy for breakfast and now, with two beers under me, I’m resting in the church contemplating the void.
Right above me is a great tormented statue of Christ on the Cross, when I first saw it I instantly sat under it, after brief standing hand-clasped look at it—(“Jeanne!” they call me in the courtyard and it’s for some other Lady, I run to the door and look out).— “Mon Jésus” I’m saying, and I look up and there He is, they’ve put on Him a handsome face like young Robert Mitchum and have closed His eyes in death tho one of them is slightly open you think and it also looks like young Robert Mitchum or Enrique high on tea looking at you thru the smoke and saying “Hombre, man, this is the end.”—His knees are all scratched so hard sore they’re scathed wore out through, an inch deep the hole where His kneecap’s been wailed away by flailing falls on them with the big Flail Cross a hundred miles long on His back, and as He leans there with the Cross on rocks they goad Him on to slide on His knees and He’s worn them out by the time He’s nailed to the cross—I was there.— Shows the big rip in His ribs where the sword-tips of lancers were stuck up at Him.— I was not there, had I been there I would have yelled “Stop it” and got crucified too.— Here Holy Spain has sent the bloodheart sacrifice Aztecs of Mexico a picture of tenderness and pity, saying, “This you would do to Man? I am the Son of Man, I am of Man, I am Man and this you would do to Me, Who Am Man and God—I am God, and you would pierce my feet bound together with long nails with big stay fast points on the end slightly blunted by the hammerer’s might—this you did to Me, and I preached Love?”
He Preached love, and you would have him bound to a tree and hammered into it with nails, you fools, you should be forgiven.
It shows the blood running from His hands to His armpits and down His sides.— The Mexicans have hung a graceful canopy of red velvet around His loins, it’s too high a statue for there to have been pinners of medals on That Holy Victory Cloth —
What a Victory, the Victory of Christ! Victory over madness, mankind’s blight. “Kill him!” they still roar at fights, cockfights, bullfights, prizefights, streetlights, fieldfights, airfights, wordfights—“Kill him!”—Kill the Fox, the Pig and the Pox.
Christ in His Agony, pray for me.
It
